Word: tubman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tubman and Liberia have come a long way since his first inauguration. Monrovia, now a city of 100,000, at that time was a town of scarcely 15,000 people sporting only four blocks of paved streets, no sewage system, no streetlighting, no radio nor telephones. Liberia's annual budget came to $750,000, and government departments were quartered in shabby, corrugated-metal reproductions of Southern U.S. ante-bellum mansions. An Americo-Liberian elite, descendants of the American slaves who declared Liberia independent in 1847,* was in power, ruling with little regard for the tribal people of the bush...
...iron-ore mines, and low shipping-registration fees (which netted the government $3,000,000 last year) give Liberia, in name anyway, the world's biggest merchant fleet. Although only 5% of the population is literate, some 1,600 youngsters have been or are being educated abroad, and Tubman says ruefully: "I'm committing political suicide. These boys will come back experts, and I know nothing but the Bible...
...years of stability to two basic policies. One is an open-door policy in regard to foreign investment. The other is his Integration and Unification Program, an effort to erase divisions between Americo-Liberians and the tribal people and to stop intertribal warfare. To still tribal rivalries, Tubman traveled far and wide through the bush to attend palavers with local chiefs, even became grand master of the secret Poro societies, to which all of Liberia's 28 tribes belong. He has extended the vote to the tribal people and banned the term Americo-Liberian. Says...
...Great Tree. His open-door economic policies have brought relative progress to Liberia. Foreign investment now amounts to nearly $750 million-mostly in iron ore, rubber and commercial banking. Tubman checks economic performance continually: an old law still on the books has it that all government expenditures of more than $200 must be approved by the President, and the President spends hours every week poring over the ledgers. As a result, important government work tends to be held...
There are more serious complaints: despite Tubman's economic gains, a large number of Liberia's 1,000,000 people still eke out all too meager an existence while the heirs of the old elite and government officials live handsomely. The 1969 austerity budget of $61 million, for instance, sets aside $37 million for government expenditure, including salaries, but only one-tenth that amount for development. Tubman's own annual salary as chief executive is $25,000. Agriculture has so far been given short shrift in economic planning. Graft and corruption abound, and Tubman's True...